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February 29, 2004
Improved Email-to-RSS Feeds
Since reporting on my experiments with email-to-RSS feeds last night, I've managed to improve the feeds I'm using for my two listservs on my blog homepage. One list, WWWEDU, is a yahoogroup list, while the other, DIGITALDIVIDE, is a Listserv list.
Improving the WWWEDU list:
The feed I demonstrated in yesterday's blog entry was problematic because it was displaying the 30 most recent stories, with the most recent at the bottom, while the Feedroll syndication script displays the most recent from the top down. This meant you needed to show all 30 stories in order to see the latest one.
Problem solved. I figured out how to get yahoogroups to show a shorter rss feed. For example, here's how to get a wwwedu rss feed for eight stories:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wwwedu/messages?rss=1&viscount=8
By adding the "&viscount=8" to the end of the URL, it limits the number to eight, which is a heck of a lot more manageable than 30. So if you want to access wwwedu's RSS feed, I'd suggest you use a variation of this. I then went to feedroll.com to generate a syndication script for it. The script looks like this:
And this is what it looks like when you include the code on a webpage:
Improving the DIGITALDIVIDE List:
At first I tried creating a fake Yahoogroup for the list which would do nothing but create the RSS feed for the site. Then I discovered Mailbucket.org, which I also described in yesterday's blog. By creating a mailbucket account on the listserv, I was able to generate an RSS feed, which I then fed into feedroll, giving me this script:
When you put this script in a webpage, it comes out looking like this:
So that's where things stand with my email-to-RSS feed experiments. Stay tuned for more once I get settled in our new apartment in Boston. For now, though, it's time to pack and get ready for the movers to come tomorrow. Stay tuned... -ac
Posted by acarvin at February 29, 2004 3:05 PM
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